The Steel Guitar Forum

OK quick question. I have only ever played one pedal steel, which is my GFI Ultra s-10. It works fine as far as I can tell, staying in tune and all that.

The one complaint I have about it is the 'slack' in the knee levers. What I mean by this is that all the levers are 'loose', moving both sideways and back and forth when wiggled. Obviously this makes little difference to my playing, but it makes the instrument a bit noisier than it could be.

Here is one of the knee levers.

As you can see, there is a little screw on either side of the lever to adjust this movement.

My question is this: is it set this way for a reason, or should I move that screw in so that there is no more slack? [/url]

Nicholas, if I were you, I'd leave those two screws in the picture alone and start with adjusting the inset hex screw on the rounded side of the lever that you press with your knee. It's just below the pivot point of the lever. A very small allen wrench should have been included with your guitar and this is what fits in there. This should enable you to take care of the side to side slack.

I'm not sure what could be causing your back and forth slack; I assume you're talking about wiggling from the front to the back of your guitar?

I hope this helps.

Bob K.

The very small screw in the lever itself controls how far back the lever goes when extended (the levers are designed to fold back under the guitar - that screw just adjusts how much they extend).

The forward/back slack actually comes from the pivot, but I can't tighten it anymore because it would make moving the lever difficult.

I don't have the right allen keys for the job right now but I am pretty sure that I can make this instrument a bit smoother to play if I can adjust those two little screws at the top.

On a side note...I always new PSGs were complicated, and I can set up a Strat Tremolo...turns out that a PSG has quite a few moving parts. It must take a long time to assemble one of these things!

Contacting the folks at GFI is always a possibility to get this squared away to your satisfaction - their e-mail address is info@gfimusicalproducts.com
and their phone number is (417) 859-2161. Good luck.

Bob K.